The present method relates to methods of consolidating web pages, and more particularly, to a method of consolidating web pages by periodically collecting data from a user-selected group of web resources for display to the user.
The number and variety of information sources available to a user on the internet is vast. It is often difficult for a user to visit a list of their favorite websites in a time thrifty manner in order to remain current on information, especially if the user has a large list of web sites she wishes to navigate. It is also difficult for a user to remain current on a number of favorite sites or to be quickly brought up-to-date on changes through simple series navigation of these sites since leaving one site to navigate to another will cause them to miss updates at the site they have left. These missed updates may or may not appear or be present the next time the user navigates to the un-viewed site as content on the internet can change quickly.
The user may have many favorite websites, blogs, social sites and other web accessible information sources that they frequent for business or personal use throughout the day. The user may spend large amounts of time navigating from one information source to another in order to get and remain current on changes at those sources. The user may open many tabs in order to quickly switch from one source to another in an attempt to stay current on these many sites. The user may bookmark a multitude sites and navigate to those bookmarks in order to stay informed. All of these solutions require that the user leave a first source of information to go to another and while at the other source, they risk the possibility that important information has changed on sites they are not viewing and if they do not navigate to that site quickly enough that update will be lost. A user may have so many favorite sites that they may lack sufficient time to effectively navigate all of them or may forget to navigate to one or many of them.
The user may employ news aggregators to stay abreast of news and information on the internet. Aggregators typically use RSS (Rich Site Summary) or (Really Simple Syndication) to present information summaries on the user's personal page. Publishers of information such as news sites, blogs or audio and video providers can choose to syndicate their information on RSS so that the user, usually by way of an aggregation site such as iGoogle, Pulse, Flipboard and the like may view these summaries or headline information on a single page or multiple pages. A user of an aggregation site may select many information sources which would then be displayed on a page so that updates from many sources can be quickly read and managed.
In order for RSS to work however, a publisher must first post to an RSS feed which is then sent out to users that have requested or subscribed to that feed on their selected aggregation site. The information that a publisher selects to publish may not be the most important or even the most current and therefor the feed may not be a reflection of what is current on the publisher's actual site or most recent in the world of information. RSS feeds may not be prioritized in a hierarchical manner and stories that are less news worthy can be placed ahead of those that are more important. While an RSS user may be able to select a feed source, they cannot select the exact portions of a site that get published and may have to endure many undesired feeds and summaries before receiving one that is needed. It is possible that important information may be delayed by a publisher to an RSS feed as they may choose to prioritize placement of that information elsewhere. Finally, many publishers on the internet simply do not provide RSS feeds, especially more esoteric sites or sites traditionally not thought of as requiring information feeds, such as shopping, couponing, hobby and other consumer based sites and interests.
Compounding the difficulties of the aforementioned solutions is the dramatic shift from desktop and laptop computers to portable devices such as smart phones and tablets and even wearable portable devices which access internet based information. These portable devices can often experience difficulty in connecting to the internet as they have no hard connection and rely on wireless data transfer. When these devices are within a Wi-Fi hotspot or wireless computer network, connectivity and speed of data transfer is not a concern but this type of service may not always be available. By their very nature, these devices are meant to be portable and a user may be in areas where there is no Wi-Fi access and poor cell reception. In these cases navigating modern websites, which often have home pages from one to several megabytes can be very time consuming, problematic or even impossible. Further complicating this problem are the numerous animations, videos or sound bites which may run on a site and require even more bandwidth and time to load. Furthermore, computer resources are used to maintain multiple open browsing sessions, which slows the performance of the computer.
What is needed is a method of allow a user to easily select only the portions of website that are important to them for organization and presentation on an Internet based page or pages. This method must allow the user to quickly view important information from many sources at one location. The user selected sites or portions of sites that have been organized on their page must be refreshed frequently enough so that the user can be kept up-to-date on the latest information on any site or portion of site selected in near real time. The data required to download this information must be kept to a minimum in order to accommodate rapid updates as well as overcome the limitations of poor or spotty cell coverage when a Wi-Fi hot spot is unavailable, especially for mobile devices such as smart phones, tables and wearable devices.